Israel to Release Footage, Recordings in Gaza Hospital Explosion

DolphinMath@slrpnk.net to World News@lemmy.world – 210 points –
Israel to Release Footage, Recordings in Gaza Hospital Explosion
wsj.com

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a briefing early Wednesday morning that no Israeli strike, either by air, land or sea, occurred near Al-Ahli Arab Hospital at the time of the deadly explosion. He added that drone footage, radar information and a recording of Gaza militants indicate a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket was responsible.

He said the Israeli military would soon publish the radar info, footage and a recording of militants in Gaza assigning blame to Islamic Jihad, a group aligned with Hamas. All the information, Hagari said, would be given to President Biden as part of a "full briefing" when the U.S. leader arrives in Israel Wednesday.

Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour accused Israel of carrying out the strike, calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a liar for blaming the strike on the armed group Islamic Jihad. “Now they change the story to try to blame the Palestinians. It is a lie,” Mansour said during a press conference at the U.N. headquarters.

Edit: From the IDF’s official Telegram Channel

Post 1:

IDF: A failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization hit the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza City

Attached is a video from the IAF system that captured the area around the hospital before and after the failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization: https://bit.ly/3M5oQMI

Post 2:

IDF: Following the briefing by the IDF Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari on the failed rocket launch by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization that hit the hospital in Gaza City:

Attached is the briefing: https://IDFANC.activetrail.biz/ANC1810202362

Attached is a recording of a conversation between Hamas operatives regarding the Islamic Jihad failed rocket launch on the hospital on October 17, 2023: https://bit.ly/3S4xqiG

Attached is a visual analysis following the IAF’s examination on the subject: https://IDFANC.activetrail.biz/ANC1810156854

Attached is an infographic of all the failed rocket launches in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war: https://IDFANC.activetrail.biz/1810202309876543672

Attached is a photograph from the IDF launch identification system on the subject: https://IDFANC.activetrail.biz/ANC18102023984

Post 3:

Following the recording that was sent out, attached is a transcript of the conversation between Hamas operatives: https://IDFANC.activetrail.biz/ANC181020238465

86

Why are we talking and not doing? Just release it already if it's vindicating.

It takes a long time to extract and compile evidence. Especially when it is this important. It will need to be checked over as well before anything is released.

They also need to redact anything damning...

or just classified in general… there’s plenty of blame to pass israel; let’s not give anyone ammo to say it’s all just bias

Yea, the charitable explanation here is definitely that they need to review the footage to make sure it doesn't contain any classified drone designs or details on troop placements.

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I'd be very interested to see their evidence, especially given the initial claim that they hit the hospital because HAMAS were there. The video that I saw shows a fuck off huge explosion, and I'd be very surprised to learn that a Jihadist group's rocket did that. AFAIK, most of their rockets are anti-personnel and anti-armor grade, stuff a little like what the HIMARS carries, not shit that's going to level half a hospital in one go. I mean, unless they're just casually rocking Tomahawk cruise missiles or something, it just seems like a big reach.

Do you have a source for this initial claim? The only one I have seen is a random tweet by a wannabe Israel fanatic influencer, and not at all an official statement.

Not on hand, heard it from an irl friend who's also following the situation. He said that Israel claimed that it met a tactical objective.

Edit: I realize I should have fact checked him, but the horrible Nancy Grace truth is that I didn't.

probably best not to say “given their initial claim” given that the source is a friend who didn’t say where they’d seen the info

so you may have misinterpreted what they were saying (someone claimed rather than reliable israeli sources claim), they could have misinterpreted what the source was saying, the source could have been exactly like this post and subject to similar accidental misinterpretation, or it could be just straight up misinformation: either accidental or intentional

given the amount of misinformation swirling about the whole situation, i’d probably go with “i had heard” or “i think someone mentioned somewhere” etc

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Other than things that could be explosive in a hospital normally (O2 canisters), Hamas has been known to use hospitals to store munitions and launch rocket strikes in the past. While I'm not saying "Israel definitely didn't do it" I don't think it's out of the question or even unlikely that it genuinely wasn't an Israeli strike

O2 doesn't explode. I've done 13 years in EMS, handled the stuff daily, tried it. O2 doesn't and wouldn't explode like that. Concentrated O2 WILL make a fire burn MUCH more aggressively, but not explode.

Confirmed

That it was a rocket?

That under normal conditions o2 won't explode, it will just make intense fire. It's a bit hard to find info on if it explodes if a rocket hits it.

Regardless, the crater shows the rocket didn't hit the hospital anyway.

I'm telling you, it shouldn't explode even if a rocket hits it. You can get pure O2 as hot as you like and it won't burn; kick it, shock it, pressurize it, stick it in a stew, it won't burn. Oxygen is a necessary part of combustion, but O2 itself does not combust; it has to have something to chemically interact with, like Hydrogen or Carbon. A lot of your explosives are things that already have oxygen built in to the molecule, IIRC, and can therefore release all of its energy all at once, where materials like Gasoline (and a lot of rocket fuels that I'm aware of) that don't have built-in oxygen will only burn as fast as oxygen can get to the molecules.

Maybe you're thinking of something like a BLEVE, which I suppose something similar is possible if there was a bunch of rocket fuel that functionally got vaporized on impact to make a fuel-air mix, but I don't think that's typically how it goes with rocket impacts.

Anyway, yes, the crater seems to be in a parking lot, so that's that.

Of course, both possibilities exist. With the information we have currently, it's not possible to definitively say either way.

The other possibility being it was Israel but was a mistake.

There was also a video clip I saw that starts with a chain link fence and then you hear a sort of whistling sound and something slams down hard with a pretty big explosion. Ofc I'm not sure it's verified or not but sounded and looked more like the impact of something like a JDAM instead of what you'd expect from the rockets fired by Hamas/Islamic jihad. Which although I understand are deadly, especially in large numbers, I don't think have the explosive charge anywhere close to the impact in the video (which also seems immediate and not a bunch of secondary explosions.)

I saw that same video, reminded me a whole hell of a lot of the videos that dropped after Ukraine got a package of JDAMs from us.

Yeah I found it just now. I know people here usually prefer Piped, etc but the Piped link to it was acting flaky for me and not playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCSugJpGdO4

And yeah here's what a JDAM sounds like, like you said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_uwzugvv-g

Any unpowered ballistic object falling out of the sky descends at the same velocity and acceleration, regardless of its size or mass.

An unpowered rocket will fall at the same speed as a dropped bomb. The horizontal and vertical vectors are separate.

No. This is all kinds of wrong.

First off you seem to imply that velocity = acceleration which is totally wrong. Then you talk about stuff that is true in a vacuum but not true when you factor in air resistance (like you would have to on earth). And finally you draw a conclusion your evidence does not actually support.

An unpowered rocket will fall at the same speed as a dropped bomb.

Only if they are the same shape and mass.

Maybe you were trying to say something about terminal velocity but you're conclusion would be wrong anyways. Surface area absolutely effects terminal velocity.

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I would like to see this evidence. The flipping of stories from Israeli spokespeople right after the event to now is bizarre. There were a number of people, even initial US government responses, saying that the hospital was a Hamas hideout, so Israel blew it up on purpose and it's a good thing.

Also, why do they just so happen to have audio recordings of this specific terrorist group talking about this event in particular within an hour or so after the event? Is that a likely thing for them to have acquired?

If you don’t trust the Israeli government, the whole thing was live-streamed. https://nitter.net/COUPSURE/status/1714380403782324249

That footage was subsequently rebroadcast on Al-Jazeera.

There’s a number of other angles you can find on the birdsite too.

And yes, if someone was talking about it on a radio, I’d expect Israeli sigint to pick it up. This is not their first rodeo. They’ve been the occupying power in Gaza for 56 years. That’s what made the Hamas massacre so shocking: how on earth did they miss the planning for two years.

That's the video where the timestamp doesn't match up with the hospital event. It's 30-ish minutes off for some confusing reason.

Not to be confused with the other video being used for a while on official Israeli government accounts that got deleted when people figured out it was from 2022.

Speaking from my own experience running local cameras, timestamps aren’t always accurate due to admin misconfig or admin laziness

But if we’re going to say that’s not the right footage, why is Al-Jazeera broadcasting it? To me, it doesn’t seem to square with their narrative, so why show it to their viewers at all?

It was just a livestream on Al Jazeera. It was running constantly. Hence why timestamps being off doesn't make much sense.

You really think shrapnel from a already disabled rocket could cause such a large explosion? Palestinians do not have western high explosives.

Do you really think an Israeli bomb doesn’t leave a crater? The impact was on a parking lot. It’s still a missile and gasoline still burns. Not that hard to believe

Edit: here is the aftermath from Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/10/18/gazas-ahli-arab-hospital-after-the-attack-that-killed-at-least-500-people

And footage from Gazans on the ground. https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1714535687070916987/

Hospital is still standing btw…

That is a very tiny hospital. I can't imagine it fitting more than 150 people in it, tops.

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Okay I actually made the effort to listen to the Audio and took a look at those photos.

The two men in the audio recording are talking about a misfire that happened directly behind the hospital - from a nearby cemetery to be exact.

https://bit.ly/3S4xqiG

On the other hand there is a picture attached that shows a rocket launch site that is quite a long way from the Hospital - or is this the cemetery those men in the voice recording were talking about?

https://idfanc.activetrail.biz/ANC18102023984

It does not seem to be the right picture…

The idea being presented is that Islamic Jihad was aiming for Israel, but miscalculated and hit a part of the hospital instead. Militants in Gaza absolutely have the capability to fire missiles from that range, so this idea isn’t a big stretch. Whether you believe the claim is up to you.

The other map from the IDF of the claimed failed launches absolutely cover the entirety of Gaza. Which is consistent with what I have heard on the news for the past 20 years.

Gaza isn't very wide and missiles can travel long distances very quickly.

Agree. Gaza strip is tiny. 25mi long. They definitely have rockets that can cover this range. The point of launch in the infographic looks maybe 10-12 miles from Israel, maybe. This assumes going straight north and not east. That's even less.

Crosspost from another similar thread:

So this here is the current view on the area where supposedly about 500 people died. Also there are allegedly more than 300 wounded.

Questions I personally have:

  • where is the rubble and where is the bomb crater?
  • why does the building seem undamaged?
  • how do you fit 800 people in this parking lot?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/oct/18/israel-hamas-war-live-news-gaza-hospital-west-bank-update-joe-biden-visit-protests-latest-updates

Yeah, you can't. That parking lot accommodates what, 20 cars? That should tell you all you need to know.

Edit - I just checked on Google Earth. The entire outdoor area hit by the rocket is 2,000 m2 including all of the parking and landscaped area.

That is 21,000 SF or ~1/2 an acre.

While you could fit more than 500 people in that area, you would have to remove the cars and pack people in like a stadium or mosh pit. At the same time, this is at a hospital.

However, most of the small buildings that make up this hospital are on the far side of the compound, hundreds of feet away. And that is where I would expect most of the people to be.

I think we need more confirmation otherwise I would not take this number at face value.

Oof. Ngl the recording is pretty telling. But it is just secondhand evidence.

The evidence presented from the recording is: someone said the shrapnel is from a Palestinian rocket." Not, "here are images of the shrapnel, which could only come from Palestinian rockets."

I haven't looked at the other evidence though. It could be that this, combined with the rest of the evidence, paints a more complete picture.

This is what I was thinking of looking for. I know in the Ukraine conflict, they typically show rocket debris when going over incidents with rockets, so I was hoping to see some of the supposed debris here.

I'll just leave this here with the warning that the "graphic video" shows dead babies and blown up people so you may want to skip that one.

One of the other videos is of the impact. You can clearly hear a projectile before the explosion. I'm not claiming to know who fired it.

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israels-spin-about-hospital-massacre-quickly-comes-apart

If you take The Electronic Intifada at face value, I really don’t know what to tell you. They are one of the most biased news outlets possible in this conflict. I’ve never one seen them once try to understand the Israeli perspective. It’s pure propaganda.

Fore example, their headline for Hamas’ brutal attack on Irsaeli civilians was “Israel-Arab normalization has not eliminated the resistance.”

@DolphinMath@slrpnk.net It looks like the copy/pasta here might run afoul of the rules regarding copyright.

Consider editing it down to make it more concise and be guaranteed to be fair use. The topic is important and I don't want to just remove it wholesale to eliminate copyright risk.

👶 🛁 🌊

Was catching up on Al Jazeera English live stream on YT just now and apparently a bunch of Arab foreign ministers are saying the same thing with references to those deleted tweets before this whole Hamas blame game situation started.

I wouldn’t put this past Hamas, but IDF aren’t exactly saints either considering the fact that they are now blocking humanitarian aid from the Rafah border crossing, and are aiming for collective punishment.

Also they’ve literally bombed a hospital in Gaza and blamed it on Hamas misfiring in 2014.

So we know for a fact they are not above this.

Exactly.

In 2014, Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza killing one patient and four people visiting the hospital, three of them children and then simply said, "Israeli Defense Forces says Hamas was storing weapons there".

Huh, wondered why yours sounded different but it was apparently one of three hospitals hit in that round of Israeli attacks.

As we said, this is normal everyday Israeli war behavior...

Israel has already killed so many UN staff in the current 2023 war on Gaza...

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/11/world/un-gaza-funding-deaths-intl/index.html

CNN —

At least 11 United Nations employees have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza since the weekend, the UN said Wednesday, even as it called for emergency funding to continue humanitarian work in the embattled Palestinian enclave.

I think if you're able to believe that Hamas killed 500 people at a hospital, why isn't it easier and simpler to believe Israel bombed them? Israel does it all the time... Hamas' track record of shooting its own people comes only from Israeli propaganda.

I wouldn't put it behind them either... but first and foremost my eyes will turn to the IDF. One cannot trust an apartheid state. Israel had been killing civilians in the area for over a week now... no reason to believe they would stop at a hospital given then fact that they actually damaged several medical facilities since this started in Gaza.

Oh I absolutely know what Israel is capable of if the last year alone (not even counting from the start of the occupation) an indication of how low they can go. I was just giving them the benefit of the doubt to try and maintain some sense of neutrality.

The shooting of Shireen Abuakleh, the killing of the Reuters journalist a few days back, the “settlers” killing and torturing people in the West Bank, the Al Aqsa instigations and “raids”, I mean, we’re not even at the tip of the iceberg here.

I was just giving them the benefit of the doubt to try and maintain some sense of neutrality.

Sadly in these times, this can also easily turn into a propaganda weapon. It becomes more and more difficult to confirm any news, but Israel saying it was a militant group (Islamic Jihad in this case) is a classic Israeli move.

The shooting of Shireen Abuakleh

I bet money that the majority of these were deliberate attacks. I'm sure "accidents" happen all the time, but when we keep finding dead journalists clearly marked as PRESS, we gotta ask ourselves...

I was thinking about this all yesterday. How would this problem be settled? Maybe a third-party observer or analyst should investigate the hospital and the footage. Would Israel allow this? No fucking idea.

And worse of all, this hospital is not government-run, so not a "Hamas" hospital., it was a Christian-led medical facility.

Edits: grammar and typos

That sounds like overly eager psychopath claiming whatever they want though. and it's a former staff.

It's also a screenshot of a tweet. Incredibly easy to fake that.

If there was a bunker under the hospital Israel wouldn't have denied the attack anyway since it would've been a legitimate military target according to conventions. So I'm fully inclined to believe that this was yet another false flag from the terrorists just like the humanitarian column gas canister explosion just to score some tankie points. They're so fucking desperate. And they never cared for civilian lives anyway.

Explain how this scores points with/ whats your definition of a tankie?

By context it seems like their definition of tankie is equivalent to woke... I.e. someone I disagree with.

This will get all the Hamas apologists screaming FAKE NEWS now, wont it. It's a bitch when reality won't conform to your belief system. Just ask the MAGA crowd.

The IDF still needs to present receipts in my opinion, and I look forward to them doing so.

Nuanced discussion and compassion seem to get lost in all the “righteous” anger surrounding this topic unfortunately.

This is my stance as well. I support the Israeli government as much as I support Hamas, which is to say I do not support either whatsoever. However, if the IDF is able to back up this claim, I'm more inclined to agree with them on this one particular whodunnit

Yet most people on lemmy seem to believe the claim of Hamas, without any proof, because it supports their hate of Israel. This is like the 10th highly upvoted article on the topic, with most comments not even questioning the claim.

It is possible that Israel did it, yes, but we don’t know it yet. IDF and Hamas both killed enough civilians already in a confirmed way, maybe let’s focus our critique on that in the meantime.

The Israeli government claimed responsibility first on twitter then deleted the tweets. It makes the whole thing a lot more sus.

The IDF has also previously bombed hospitals and at least 1 UN run school so it wouldn't be out of character to do it.

The Israeli government has also stated they consider Palestinian people less than human and intend to level the Gaza strip.

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They (israel) dropped more bombs in 2 weeks than was set off in afghanistan in a year of american assault.

Why do you think its more likely a jihad mistaken self attack?

A large number of “bombs” being “dropped” does not necessarily indicate indiscriminate killing of civilians. In fact, a large number likely indicates smaller munitions being used for more targeted strikes.

A number of explosives surpassing an american quantity of destructive force over a country restricted down to the size of gaza absolutely implies an increased odds of israel missing a target.

Im not even attributing intent, despite israels eagerness to supply it. Im sure they didnt mean to hit the hospital. I would hope, at least, especially given how poorly its looked for them on the world stage.

Not just a place the size of Gaza, but a place as densely populated as Gaza.

There's about 15,000 people per square mile.

Emm, you do realise more than 3000 palestine civilian being killed since the israel invasion in respond to hamas invasion right?

Right?

Have you seen the pictures of Gaza recently? Smaller targeted munitions don't level entire blocks. You're doing straight up genocide apologia.

I’m following it closely. The photos and videos I’ve seen and the interviews I’ve heard are absolutely horrific.

I wouldn’t throw out the term genocide lightly, but my heart breaks for the innocents. War is literal hell.

I dont think anyone is using the term genocide lightly in reference to this massacre.

I would even argue that genocide will have a shining, bloody example in history books for centuries to come thanks to israels actions.

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